Sunday 12 August 2007

IT Services Vs. IT Product

Indian IT industry and IT players have often been criticised by so-called 'arm chair critics' for being service oriented and not being product oriented. They often criticise companies like TCS and Infosys for not investing much in creating products instead looking for quick money by going after service market where money in relatively easy to be made.
But I see nothing wrong in this. It's with this same service industry that entire India got the confidence which it enthuse today. Before the birth of same the IT industry, hardly any industry was confident enough to stand up on it's own feet forget about going into the world arena but today many players from other industries like steel, automobiles, FMGC, electronics ect. are becoming global thanks to the path shown this IT service industry.
Critics forget this. They forget that to reach to the top one has to take small steps. You can not simply spring to the top but you have to take small baby steps initially then take faster steps and once confident you go into fast lane. That's what IT industry has been doing. Now we are even seeing some product companies in India as well. I will not say that we'll displace US just tomorrow in product space, that will again take time. Moutains can not be moved just overnight, they take their own time. So we'll also take time to build IT product industry.
Critics compare that TCS was even born before Microsoft and they say look where Microsoft is, but they turn blind eye to the environment each of these companies born in. Where India was when TCS was born, that was not the market supportive of any kind of industry. India was a bleeding ground for freed enterprises before 90s whereas US have been breeding ground.
So you can not compare a poor's son with that of a King's when comparing their lives and achievements. But with the kind of environment created by these giant IT service players, not the ground is set for product companies to take birth.

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